Poland has plunged into an institutional crisis with the arrest of two politicians from the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), one of them the former Minister of the Interior Mariusz Kaminski, who had taken refuge in the official residence of the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, originating from the same party. Both are convicted of crimes of abuse of power in other public positions they held in 2007.
The night before last, the police entered the presidential palace and arrested them, in an escalation of tension between the new coalition government of centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the politicians of the right-wing PiS, a party that governed for eight years until being ousted from power by the results of the October 15 elections.
The cohabitation between Tusk and Duda is being stormy, and could get worse, given the power of veto in certain cases and other prerogatives that the president has, and that Duda could use to bog down government tasks. “We are faced with an attempt to use the highest state institutions to build a dual system of power,” Tusk said Tuesday at a news conference in Warsaw.
Mariusz Kaminski, Minister of the Interior in the previous Government, had been convicted of abuse of power when years before he headed the Anti-Corruption Agency – he was accused of allowing agents under his command to act illegally in an investigation – and in 2015, just after Before PiS came to power, he was pardoned by Duda. That pardon allowed him to be a minister. The other detainee, Maciej Wasik, former deputy minister of the Interior and close collaborator of his, was in a similar situation and had also received a presidential pardon.
The pardon set off a dispute among legal experts, with some questioning whether the president could pardon before an appeals court issued a final ruling. The Constitutional Court, dominated by Law and Justice appointees, backed Duda, while some Supreme Court judges said the pardon was unfounded. Last year, the Supreme Court said the case should be reopened, and in December an appeals court sentenced Kaminski and Wasik to two years in prison. Yesterday, Duda defended the validity of the pardon before the press and said that he will work to have the two men released soon.
Yesterday, a PiS leader read a statement to the press on behalf of Mariusz Kaminski. “I declare that I consider my conviction as an act of political revenge,” says Kaminski. As a political prisoner, I have started a hunger strike since the first day of my imprisonment.” Kaminski, 58, is a controversial character, who was also coordinator of the secret services and, in the eyes of his critics, embodies the most authoritarian soul of the party.
During the hours on Tuesday when Kaminski and Wasik were in the presidential palace, Tusk appealed to Duda not to “sabotage justice with his worrying attitude” and stressed that “the crime of protecting a criminal can be punished with five years in prison.” PiS supporters had already gathered in front of the palace at night, while the party accused Tusk of threatening the president.
On Tuesday, Kaminski published photos on social networks accompanied by Duda from the palace, with the phrase: “I am not hiding, I am here, with the president,” and then told the press: “A shadowy dictatorship is being formed. “We cannot allow Poland to have political prisoners.” Finally, police officers came to the scene and detained him and his second wife, Wasik. Duda’s office chief, Grazyna Ignaczak-Bandych, said the president was not in the palace at the time of the arrests and called the police operation an “illegal entry.”
Meanwhile, the Sejm (lower house of Parliament) has suspended sessions until next week, a decision by its president, Szymon Holownia, given the refusal of Kaminski and Wasik – both were elected deputies in the last elections – to accept the loss of their seats due to the December judicial conviction. “There is a reason for this decision: my task is to guarantee the dignity of the Sejm and social calm,” said Holownia, who is leader of the Poland 2050 Christian Democrat party, part of the ruling coalition.
Parliament was due to vote this week on the 2024 budget. It has until the end of January to send the budget to Andrzej Duda for ratification with his signature. If he does not send it on time, the president has the power to dissolve Parliament.
